The Afterlife


It's Time For The Afterlife!

Some have-not-sardonically-called this the Decade of Death. And the subject does seem to have come alive, if you'll excuse the expression. Never before has our generally death-denying culture seemed so ready to acknowledge this ineluctable fact-of-life. We have seen in our own travels more and more people getting into popular thanatology, whether it take the form of NDEs (Near Death Experiences), re-writings and updatings of traditional works on death e.g. The American Book of the Dead, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, or books that help us help our friends or loved onesthrough death. We hope that the following reviews can help you serve your customers in this most important (of all!) topic.

-Douglas Cracraft


The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

$14.00, Trade Paper, ISBN: 0-05-250834-2, Harper/San Francisco

This is a book from a large trade house that we choose to review due to its importance. It is an extremely approachable work, following in the tradition of upbeat, popular Buddhism laid down by Chogyam Trungpa. Replete with many anecdotes and stories of Sogyal Rinpoche's life and teachers, old Buddhist tales and allegory, this book excels in giving one a sense of what it might be like to grow up in a Buddhist culture instead of experiencing it as an rare import. Sogyal Rinpoche goes a long way to making both the difficult subject and an exotic culture seem like old friends. Divided into four main sections, Living, Dying, Death & Rebirth, and Conclusion, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying takes the reader gently from generalities to specifics of both death and Buddhist theology and thanatology. Herein is one of the best explications of the common but much misunderstood concept of the Bardo that I've seen. Sogyal Rinpoche makes the process of stripping away most of what we think we are at death visualizable, and gives exercises for developing compassion and vision. Also, notable for a Buddhist-oriented book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying treats the subject of the Near Death Experience, or the NDE, showing just how far into popular American culture the Tibetans have been able to move.


The American Book of the Dead by E. J. Gold, Foreword by John Lilly, M.D.

$13.00, Trade Paper, ISBN: 0-06-251310-9, Harper San Francisco

The American Book of the Dead is a spiritual classic: in print for over twenty years, it was one of the first works written with the express aim of bringing the kernel of the Tibetan teaching to a modern audience. The author's introduction and front matter place these teachings in a recognizable context, while colloquial language and street-savvy humor bring once exotic ideas right into the local culture. This latest edition is enhanced with new illustrations by the author and an appendix of "Bardomania." In the early 70's this breakthrough book side-stepped the Tibetan cultural paradigm and all the academic issues-like how many demons can dance on a pin-and cut straight to the actual practices, with concise instructions on how to set up a reading altar, how to work around funeral and burial arrangements, and how to deliver the instructions to the Being (in Gold's lingo, The Voyager) in short, a no-nonsense initiation into Bodhisattva duty! This book of the dead was widely used during the '70's, and is now becoming a mainstream classic, as the adults of the babyboomer generation turn their children on to it. Along with tracking the entire 49-day course of the Voyage through the after-life, with all its familiar surprises and pratfalls, Gold's text emphasizes the ever-presentness of the Bardo. He states in several ways that this teaching is meant for life-long application, not just at terminus. Dr. John Lilly's assessment, in his tantalizing Foreword, is this: "Here in short form is the substance of basic human esoteric teachings given in modern language."


Mortal Acts-Eighteen Empowering Rituals for Confronting Death, David Feinstein and Peg Elliott Mayo

$9.00, Trade Paper, ISBN 0-06-250330-8, Har'per/SanFrancisco

"Offered as a resource for addressing this impoverished area of our culture..." Mortal Acts is a rather small (110 pages) book, but it has no dead weight. Going right to the eighteen exercises with a minimum of overview, the book begins with several anecdotes-a middle-aged man, depressed and suicidal from successive losses in life, has an NDE as a result of a car accident, and faces both life and death with a renewed sense of joy and possibility. A woman traumatized by her own mother's horrifying (to a child) death of diabetic gangrene is haunted in her later life. Therapy-and ritual-help her make peace with the loss and her own inevitable demise. A family loses an infant child shortly before Christmas-therapy, and again, ritual, help them get through. The eighteen rituals given are broken up into five sections: Rattling Your System of Death Denial, Transcending the Fear of Death, Fear of Death and images of Transcending Death, Toward a Renewed Mythology of Death, and Bringing Your Renewed Mythology about Death into Life These all suggest a practical book, and Mortal Acts is that. With virtually no philosophy added, this book serves as a kind of thumbnail camping guide for this new territory we're discovering. It should he of interest to those preparing themselves or others for death, and anyone seeking to expand their vision of life and death.


Caring for Your Own Dead, by Lisa Carison

$12.95, Trade Paper, ISBN: 0-942679-00-8, Upper Access Publishers

One unfortunate result of our culture's horror of death is a lack of information about what one can do when it happens to someone close to us. And by this we mean not meditations or esoteric approaches to guiding the soul, but a practicum on what to do when someone close to you dies, what the laws in your state are regarding burial, dying at home, cremation, etc. My own father died recently, and I found myself wondering if it were legal to bring him home from the hospital while he was in a terminal state. This book belongs on every library shelf, and anyone who anticipates the "shocking ambush" of death in his or her immediate surroundings can use it, especially those who will be dealing with the "professionals," the undertakers, the doctors and nurses. The edition dates from 1987 but according to the publisher, applicable state laws as reported are accurate, aside from fees, which will probably have risen. From a very small New England publisher, this book is the result of Mrs. Carlson's education in these matters stemming from the death of her husband.


Deathing: An Intelligent Alternative for the Final Moments of Life, by Anya Foos-Graber

$14.95, Trade paper, ISBN: 0-89254-0I~8, Nicholas-Hays, Inc. (dist. by Samuel Weiser)

Only on the shelves since 1989, Deathing has already become an indispensable addition to the Death & Dying category, a remarkable candid and detailed manual of preparation-from a strongly spiritual perspective. (The book is dedicated to the author's teacher, Satya Sai Baba.) This description by Dr. Kenneth Ring from his Foreword can't be topped; we'd just like to add that the section at the back called "Instructions for the Support Person" is very well done, and the "Resources" annotated bibliography is the best we've seen:

"But how are we moderns to learn the act of deathing? To provide this instruction, Anya has relied upon a twofold method, ingenious in its simplicity but absolutely effective in its aim. She first offers us 'a teaching tale' - a narrative in which we are introduced to two case studies, Tom and Selma, who present to us contrasting portraits in death: Tom dies, but we are shown Selma's deathing. The differences are clear and the lessons self-evident... In the section that follows, Anya has written a manual of deathing in which the various techniques and exercises are fully but simply described. This manual is designed both for the individual who desires to practice deathing as well as for the friend who wishes to assist the process. Of course. as Anya makes plain, these exercises are meant to be practiced and mastered before one is in any immediate or obvious danger of dying, so that the moment of death, whenever it does come, is one of conditioned deathing, not adventitious dying." (p. xv)


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